Here’s what’s happening at the library!

Fake news. It has been around for years. Up until the 1890’s, it was called “false news” and sometimes punishable if the journalist was found to be spreading false stories. In 1890, the “fake news” term was used, but the meaning was still the same; false, often shocking information, spread under the form of news reporting.
A person gets to wondering exactly how much of what you hear or read on television, radio, newspapers, or the internet is real, or do people really care that much as long as the story “hooks” them, as in a good work of fiction.
Remember the game Rumor or Telephone in which the first person would whisper a sentence into the next person’s ear, for example, “dogs dig holes for big bones”, or “twelve people pulled ripe turnips”? By the time the message had gotten to the last person in line, it had taken on a whole new meaning.
People like to hear the juicy stuff, read the juicy stuff, believe the juicy stuff. But there has to be room for the truth, too, ergo our non-fiction section of the library which hosts only about a third of our books.
There are ways to protect yourself from fake news by, knowing the source of the information, reading more than just the headlines, checking the dates of the story, or knowing that just because a story agrees with your ideals, it does not make it true.
Personally, I’d rather let the professionals at CNN or our national networks do the investigating for me. I want the whole story, the details, the colorful words that make up great fake news.
I want all of that aforementioned stuff that a good book of crime/detective fiction, fantasy fiction, historical fiction, horror, mystery, and science fiction, short fictional stories, westerns, realistic fiction, fairy tales, picture books, junior and young adult fiction, and many more “fictions” can bring to my need of fake news.
Fake news you want? Come on in. There are new “reports” that arrive at our door every month.
Happy Reading!